However, the fact that I don't "get it," coupled with the "fact" that Comey himself seems to have gotten "punked" by Russia on the linchpin issue of "the Trump administration" -- suggests that Putin may actually be a puppet master.

It is beyond bizarre that Russian operatives could "oblige" Comey to take historically decisive action based on information he knew to be false!?!?!

Sometime in the late seventies (?) I bumped into a "distant" neighbor and fellow parishioner named RR whose Dad was a well-connected Republican lawyer renowned for his political clout.

R was a few years older than I so I didn't really know him: when your a grammar school student age segregation is a big deal.

I asked R what he was doing and he said something like "I'm working at Sibley's."

It then came out that R had been a lawyer in Washington D.C. -- "on the fast track to high end success" -- when suddenly "every star in the firmament suddenly aligned against him" and very soon thereafter he was disbarred.

He seemed truly flabbergasted by this reversal of fortune, and since it was the only "real" conversation I ever had with him, he didn't need to provide me with any detail.

Side Note: Kevin met wife Cathy (a Mercy nun novice at the time) while she was taking care of R's kids while he and his wife were out of town: there was a plumbing issue in R's upstairs bathroom and Kevin was the family's designated handy man.

Back to the story...

When I asked R for more detail about his disbarment, he said: "I can only imagine that a "Washington power broker" thought I had seen a document that implicated him in nefarious activity, and so, before I had a chance to jeorpardize his career, he decided to make me an uncredible witness by having me disbarred."

I have no idea how much palace intrique and Byzantine back-stabbing takes place in American government. But when you contemplate reptile-people like Sessions and Trump and Nixon and Haldeman -- and all the other submerged denizens of The Swamp -- who knows?

Nixon Aide, John Ehrlichman, Admits Blacks And Hippies Were Massively Convicted Of Trivial Drug Crimes For Political Gain

We all know that money is a drug. But after a while, money gets demoted to a kind of status "marker." It's pretty clear that when a person's annual income rises above $75,000.00 s/he is not any happier for the fact.